


playing poker with the odds of roy sullivan

by cosmicpoet



Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types, Super Dangan Ronpa 2
Genre: Angst, First Meetings, Hospitals, M/M, Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-28
Updated: 2019-04-28
Packaged: 2020-02-09 08:41:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,773
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18634687
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cosmicpoet/pseuds/cosmicpoet
Summary: Komaeda knows that it's likely he won't leave this hospital ever again. He doesn't have long left, but there's a faint spark of hope when he meets a stranger by complete chance. It's almost as though now he knows what legacy to leave.





	playing poker with the odds of roy sullivan

Komaeda is thankful that his hospital room has a window. It’s an awfully quiet situation, one that snuck up on him only months ago and has since only festered in bad luck and destruction, but at least he can count his remaining sunrises with visuals to accompany them. That’s all he does these days; sometimes, he has enough strength to drag himself out of bed, clutching the IV drip stand with fragile, shaking hands, and sometimes he has to look out of the corner of his eye, aching and exhausted, like his body knows that he isn’t worthy of seeing such majesty.

But, god, it is _beautiful._ The way the sunlight crowns the horizon, so tentatively and gently, until it decides that burning is a fitting way to be reborn, and rays of golden dawn light blossom over the sky, leaking through the cracks of tall buildings and sinking in waves across the hospital car park. With longing in his eyes, he watches people - visitors - pour like rain into the building, wondering how much time each of them have left, and whether they have considered their own mortality. His room is on the sixth floor, and from up here, he feels uncomfortable in the position as a faithless god. Everyone below is so real, and in moments like this, he has to run his hands across his face, mapping out his own features - even to his own discomfort, he has to know if he is still alive.

With no parents, and no friends to visit him, he’s learned to be lonely. His only company, besides the sunrise, can be found in the letters he writes, but never sends. There’s a whole journal of them, always on the table next to his bed, addressed to Roy Sullivan, mythologised in his mind into the embodiment of his luck cycle. He finds soft comfort in imagining those who have died before him; it comforts him to know that the final words of Van Gogh were _‘sadness will last forever’ -_ and then he died, and sadness lasted forever.

These little pieces of history surround him, and he calls them friends. All of the Van Goghs, the Mozarts, the Mark Antonys, the Percy Shelleys, but most of all, Roy Sullivan. The man who lived through bad luck and died with a final breath when he’d merely had enough.

When the door to his room opens, he takes a startled breath in, not expecting any of the nurses to visit him so early. Standing there is a man, drenched in rain that Komaeda hadn’t even noticed was falling outside, with a confused look on his face.

“This…this is room 642, right?”

“Ah, no,” Komaeda says, managing a smile, “this is 624.”

“Shit, sorry.”

“It’s fine. I think you should find the room you’re looking for if you just go out of here and all the way down the hall, then take a left and it’ll-”

He can’t finish his sentence. Standing up for so long, walking to the door, and talking at the same time have weakened him to the point where he suddenly feels a thick dizziness in his head, spinning in time with the nausea and the blurred vision that overtake him. And then he’s falling, confused, and time passes for a moment, hanging in the balance, like the gods are rolling the dice to see if this is it. The dice fall - doubles - and he blinks his eyes open to see the man pressing the call button at the side of his bed.

“R-Really,” Komaeda says, trying to stand, “you don’t need to bother the nurses.”

“Better to be safe than sorry, eh?”

“I’m sure they have much better things to do.”

“It’s their job.”

“Well…thank you. Like I was saying, you’ll find room 642 if you go to the left at the end of the hallway.”

“I’m sure it can wait. I wouldn’t feel comfortable leaving until I know the nurses are here.”

“Oh. I’m sorry. You really don’t have to, though, I’m sure whoever you’re visiting is excited to see someone like you!”

“It’s just my friend. She’ll be fine for the moment, all of us are taking turns visiting her.”

“What happened to her?”

“Oh, she fell down the stairs at work ‘cause she was playing on her DS. That’s why I’m bringing her these,” the man shows Komaeda a bag full of video games and chocolates.

“Oh…wow. It must be lovely to have a friend like you.”

“Do you not?”

“Haha, no. Not that I mind it! I wouldn’t be comfortable putting that burden onto anyone.”

“Yikes. That’s…heavy. I’m Hinata, by the way.”

“Komaeda.”

“Nice to meet you. Hey, I know this might sound forward, but here’s my number,” Hinata says, writing it down on a piece of paper from his pocket, “in case, y’know, you change your mind about being cool with having no friends.”

“I’m afraid I can’t leave the hospital.”

“That’s chill, I can come visit you.”

“You’d do that?”

“Yeah, man.”

The nurses arrive, breaking up the conversation. As Hinata explains to them how Komaeda fell, Komaeda looks at him inquisitively, wondering why he feels that he’s just met someone who’s destined to change the world. But then Hinata is waving goodbye, and the nurses are fussing over him and making him lie back down in bed, asking him to rate his level of pain and telling him not to lie.

And then he’s alone again, and Roy Sullivan is calling.

He writes.

_Dearest,_

_I met someone today. He’s the first face I’ve seen without pity in a long while. It was refreshing, like all of those sunrises were counting down to something else, but it isn’t without the bittersweet realisation of what will happen next. I know I met a revolutionary. I can tell - he isn’t the Ultimate Hope yet, but I feel he could be. And having the fortune of meeting him means that only one thing can spring from this; misfortune enough that I can only hope it kills me, because anything otherwise would be unbearable at such a grand level._

_Still, I’m quite enamoured with my life ending on a high. If I die, I’ll cement my place into the universe as ‘lucky’, having died after the wonderful chance meeting with Hinata. And, who knows, perhaps if I can avoid bad luck just this once, the world will balance itself further and get closer to the idyll of a hopeful future that I have accepted I will not be alive to see._

_There are things, yet, that I haven’t done. I think it will be nice to die at sunset._

_Yours, eternally, in lightning and in luck,_

_Komaeda._

Folding the letter and placing it under his pillow, he stands up, shakily. He cannot risk falling down again, because he needs to play this final act out to perfection. It hurts - badly - when he pulls the IV out of his arm, but it’s a necessity that he takes with pleasure, knowing that any pain is good when, soon enough, he won’t be able to feel anything. Forever.

Dressed in hospital pyjamas and slippers, he walks through the halls, telling himself that it’s not a crime to walk outside, and hoping that he’s forgettable enough that any of the staff who pass him won’t recognise his face as the weak, frail, twenty-two year old who’s paying in loose change for imminent death. Thankfully, he doesn’t run into anyone.

Back at his house - his parents’ old house - he knows where things are. He checks that the gun is still in the safe, and then takes money from under his father’s mattress and hails a taxi to take him to the shop at the end of the road, buying beer and cigarettes for one last, lonesome afternoon.

The sunlight sinks onto his pale skin, opening up old scars and wounds, pushing vague warmth against his bones. They almost peek through the layers of flesh. He’s held together so haphazardly that he fears not even making it to sunset. But, with a cool beer in one of his hands, and a cigarette in the other, he wouldn’t exactly mind just passing away here and now. Of course, it wouldn’t be ideal, but when has anything ever gone to plan for him?

The world, however, is kind. 

Just this once, the world is kind.

As the sun dips down, he waves goodbye to the light and looks up, trying to see the first glimpse of stars. There’s nothing. The light is still too powerful, radiant in its majesty of gold, and he closes his eyes, imprinting the image on his memory, forever. The sadness may last forever, but this, too, will rock him gently to sleep.

He puts a bullet in the gun, spins the cylinder, and hears the resonant sound of teeth on metal.

And the sunset sinks.

* * *

 

Hinata walks through the hospital hallway, a bunch of flowers in one hand and two handheld games consoles that Nanami has given him to borrow in the other. He’s got some multiplayer games that he knows he’ll be terrible at, but he thinks it might cheer Komaeda up to have an afternoon where he doesn’t have to sit and stare at the ceiling of a painfully ordinary room.

But room 624 is empty. Confused, he walks up to one of the nurses outside.

“Hey, do you know where Komaeda is? He’s in room 624. Or at least, I thought he’d be.”

_“Komaeda._ I’m sorry - are you family?”

“No,” Hinata says, raising an eyebrow, “just a…friend.”

“You haven’t heard? Oh, I’m so sorry. Komaeda…he died, last night.”

“W-What? He…how? I thought you guys sorted him out after he fell, I-”

“He left the hospital. We got the report in this morning from the police.”

“What happened?”

“He…killed himself.”

_“What?”_

“I…I’m sorry, I have to get back to work. B-But there’s going to be a vigil for him tonight at seven. I don’t think he ever really knew it but…we all liked having him around.”

_On the morning of September 28th, 1983, Roy Sullivan shot himself in the head. It is said that his death went unnoticed for hours, even by his wife, who was lying beside him at the time. Roy Sullivan is remembered for being struck by lightning seven times, surviving each strike. In the latter years of his life, people feared being around him for this reason, and he died lonely._

_How we choose to remember those who have died is a problem for the living, and the living alone._

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoyed this. Roy Sullivan was a real person, and the subject of a song I like a lot, titled 'Roy Sullivan, by Lightning Loved'. 
> 
> If you're struggling with any of the issues mentioned in this fic, please look at the international list of suicide hotlines - <http://ibpf.org/resource/list-international-suicide-hotlines>.


End file.
